Beat with shoes officials who demand bribe, says minister Sudhakar Singh

PATNA: State agriculture minister Sudhakar Singh on Saturday asked the people of Kaimur district to "beat with shoes" personnel of weights and measures directorate who demand bribe from them. He also transferred one of them to the state headquarters and kept him "waiting for posting" for demanding bribe in the range of Rs3,000 to Rs25,000 from various private shops and establishments. "Yes, I did ask farmers and others to beat with their shoes any employee who demands bribe," he told this newspaper, when contacted over mobile phone.
"I had received complaints about the weights and measures officials, who had demanded Rs 3,000 to Rs 25,000 as bribe from three different private establishments. On Saturday, I personally visited the shops and establishments from whom the bribe had been demanded and found the complaints true," Singh said.
He said Rs25,000 had been demanded from a petrol pump owner, Rs5,000 from a retailer of chemical fertilizers and Rs 3,000 from a foodgrain trader. I transferred the weights and measures wing official concerned and also put him waiting for posting. Administrative action like suspension would follow after the inquiry," Singh said.
Asked about his move to get input-output evaluation done of the three agriculture road maps by a third-party agency/institution, Singh said his department's formal order in this regard was awaited.
"The third-party evaluation of the last three agriculture road maps will be done by a reputed body like Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), or some other institution. This is the norm that is also followed by the central government. It has also been done in the state in quite a few schemes on the state government's order," he said.
"The evaluation report will be helpful in preparing the 4th agriculture road map, which, in any case, will be ready for guidelines and implementation by February next year," he said.
Singh is of the view that the objective of the first agriculture road map with around Rs 6,000 crore expenditure was "limited". However, the objective and target of the second and third agriculture road maps were very high and the money involved was Rs1.5 lakh crore and Rs1 lakh crore, respectively.
Further, he has maintained that the objective of augmenting foodgrain production reached a plateau by 2021-22 fiscal and, in fact, the total foodgrain production fell from 1.77 crore tonnes in 2011-12 to 1.76 crore tonnes in 2021-22.
Besides, the targets regarding foodgrain production and farmers' income were not quantified in the third and fourth agriculture road maps and the relative increase in population of the state was also not taken into account. "If the investment is made, its input-output evaluation is necessary to know about the real situation to plan for the future," Singh insisted.
Meanwhile, without going into a confrontation with Singh, JD(U) MLC and spokesman Neeraj Kumar said the "country has been a witness to the implementation of the three road maps and achievements made," as a result of which the state won the Krishi Karman awards given by the Centre and also made a record achievement in the animal husbandry resources sector, winning the central award and citation in 2018.